Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

In May 1944, Model began requesting that the OKH transfer him additional armoured formations in order to mount a counter-offensive to recover ground east of L’vov. In reality, Model simply wanted additional armoured reserves to deal with the next round of Soviet offensives and he was able to convince Hitler and the OKH that Heeresgruppe Nordukraine was likely to receive the enemy’s main blow, rather than Heeresgruppe Mitte. Eventually, Hitler authorized the transfer of the LVI Panzerkorps (4. and 5.Panzer-Divisionen, s.Pz.abt.505 and Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 237) from Heeresgruppe Mitte to Heeresgruppe Nordukraine on 29 May, which effectively deprived the former of its primary armoured reserves. Instead, Heeresgruppe Mitte was left with only a single Panzer-Division in operational reserve – Generalleutnant Mortimer von Kessel’s 20.Panzer-Division, which had a single Panzer-Abteilung with 71 Pz IVs. In addition, Heeresgruppe Mitte had s.Pz.Abt.501, with 20 operational Tigers.

Advance of Soviet tank armies during Operation Bagration and Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive, June-July 1944

Yet even if Heeresgruppe Mitte had retained the LVI Panzerkorps and been reinforced with additional armour, Germany’s ability to conduct mobile operations was rapidly coming to an end due to the fuel crisis. The Third Reich had always been short of fuel, but the Allied bombing effort that began in April 1944 against German oil production facilities had an almost immediate impact upon the Luftwaffe and mechanized units. The Romanian oil fields at Ploesti were bombed repeatedly in April-June 1944 and production was curtailed by 80 per cent, while the attacks on synthetic plants deprived Germany of both fuel and synthetic rubber. Between March and September 1944, Germany’s production of fuel for motor vehicles fell by 64 per cent, which immediately impacted the operational mobility of Panzer-Divisionen at the front.⁴⁰

On 31 May 1944, the Ostheer had been reduced to only 955 operational tanks on the Eastern Front, of which 233 were Tigers, 238 were Panthers and 484 were Pz IVs.⁴¹ The Ostheer had a total of 16 Panzer-Divisionen, seven Panzergrenadier-Divisionen and six schwere Panzer-Abteilungen. Only about six of the 23 mechanized divisions were still reasonably combat effective (Großdeutschland, 1., 4., 5., 8. and 24.Panzer-Divisionen) while the rest were reduced to 25–40 per cent combat effectiveness. Noticeably, the bulk of the German armour was in the south: 606 tanks in Heeresgruppe Nordukraine, 190 in Südukraine, 86 in Mitte and just 73 in Nord. In contrast, the Red Army was now capable of committing over 6,000 tanks into battle across the Eastern Front, with large reserves ready to replace losses.

By early June 1944, Heeresgruppe Mitte had over 578,000 personnel assigned – 31 per cent of the entire Ostheer – although its actual front-line combat strength was barely 120,000 troops.⁴² Busch’s main forces consisted of Generaloberst Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s PzAOK 3, General der Infanterie Kurt von Tippelskirch’s AOK 4 and General der Infanterie Hans Jordan’s AOK 9, which altogether had a total of 26 infantry divisions, two Luftwaffe Feld-Divisionen and three Panzergrenadier-Divisionen (18, 25, Feldherrnhalle). Busch also had Generaloberst Walter Weiss’s AOK 2, which protected the boundary between Heeresgruppe Mitte and Heeresgruppe Nordukraine. Busch was fairly optimistic that the salient could be held due to the strong field works, since previous Soviet offensives had taken days or weeks to chew their way through less robust defences. Based upon past experience of Soviet efforts to break German defence lines, neither Busch nor the OKH anticipated that the Red Army would be able to create a breakthrough in more than one or two sectors, which could then be contained. The only really worrisome factor was the weakness of the Luftwaffe, since Luftflotte 6 only had 40 Bf-109G fighters assigned – grossly insufficient for air cover over Heeresgruppe Mitte.